


when both our cars collide

by TeresaChristina



Category: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit RPF
Genre: Angst and Feels, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Don't Like Don't Read, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Past Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 20:36:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8028097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeresaChristina/pseuds/TeresaChristina
Summary: what's the worst that I could say? so long and goodnight.





	when both our cars collide

**Author's Note:**

> Real people, fake story. So very, very fake. Not based in reality one bit and likely extremely OOC. Enjoy with caution.

_if you're trying to call, I can't talk right now. I'm at st. luke's. room 224_

He hadn't been trying to call. Not for weeks. She was the one who had been texting all weekend, posting pictures on Instagram when he wasn't answering fast enough, and leaving tearful drunk voicemails about how she 'doesn't _understand_ what's going on, you can't do this to me' several times a night.

_get some sleep rish_

_I can't. I haven't slept in three days. can you talk?_

_busy right now, sorry_

So yeah, it was probably mean of him to get online right after he sent that text and upload a pic of himself doing absolutely nothing important. But he can't say he felt guilty about it, especially when she liked the picture about 0.004 seconds after he posted it. Fucking stalker.

Or maybe he did feel a tiny bit guilty, and that's why he's getting into his car to drive into the city at 2 AM. It's not because he's genuinely worried about what she's done, or what she might do if he keeps ignoring her- that would imply that she's managed to successfully manipulate him, again. And it's absolutely not because he just wants to be there with her, for her, because those days are over.

He doesn't tell her he's on his way. He doesn't reply at all, because he knows _she_ knows that he'll be there. They've done this before. And yet he still exhales in relief when he gets to the door of her room and sees her lying there with an IV in her arm, looking tired and sad but physically unharmed.

Peter is sitting in a chair next to her bed, flipping through a magazine. Mariska's eyes are closed so he spots Chris before she does. "Oh, look who it is."

"Chris?" She pushes herself up on her elbows, almost dislodging her IV in the process. "You came."

"Yeah, honey, I did," he says tiredly, the pet name slipping out before he could stop himself.

"You're supposed to be resting," Peter reminds her before he turns toward Chris again. "Visiting hours start at 8:30."

"Baby, I wanna talk to him. You should go home and get some sleep."

"No, I'm not-"

"Go," she orders him flatly, her voice turning from sweet to sharp in an instant. He looks like he wants to say something else, but he backs down under the weight of her stare and tosses aside the latest issue of House Beautiful.

"I'll come by on my way to work in the morning."

"Yeah, that's fine. Oh, and tell Sarah to remember Amaya needs her tennis shoes for school tomorrow."

He mutters something in German to himself on the way out. Chris hasn't studied the language since 8th grade, but he infers that it wasn't kind. Once Peter is gone, he steps into the room but doesn't sit down, choosing instead to stand near the foot of the bed. Mariska's eyes are already swimming with tears. "So...you gonna tell me what happened?"

"If you came here just to yell at me like that, don't. Okay?"

"Who's yelling?" he asks, holding his hands up in surrender and taking a seat when what he'd really like to do is grab her by the shoulders and shake her a little. "All I'm doing is asking."

"I was having chest pains. I thought it was my heart." She knows it's never her heart. "They told me I was having a panic attack." Again, no surprises there. She points to the IV with her chin tilted in defiance. "And I'm dehydrated. The doctor says I need rest and fluids."

"So why aren't you sleeping? Didn't they give you something?"

"I told them I wasn't going to take anything right now." He bets the doctors must love this princess shtick, probably just as much as he does. Of course, in the past he's literally hauled her over his lap and smacked her ass when he was fed up, a technique that they don't have at their disposal. "I wanted to be awake when you came."

"Well, I'm here," he says, missing the days when semi-kinky sex was enough to solve their problems.

Her chin is quivering. "Why wouldn't you talk to me."

"I _did_ , Mariska, I'm sorry I can't stop what I'm doing to tell you you're pretty every five minutes. I'm busy."

"I can tell."

"Things have been rough lately, and I need some time to myself-"

"You're not by yourself!" she hisses. "I'm not stupid, Chris, I can figure out when-"

"Well, guess what? I don't owe you an explanation, and I sure as hell don't owe you an apology. I don't owe you a goddamn thing, not after the way you left me hanging."

"I said I needed time. Why can't you understand that?"

"Because I'm tired of waiting! I thought that finally, fucking finally, we were getting somewhere...you promised me, Mariska. You promised me it was over."

"I still mean that, baby, I know you're mad," she says tearfully, and he doesn't bother to correct her and say that he isn't mad so much as heartbroken. She looked him right in the eyes, hands clasped over his, and swore to him that she was ready. That she'd tell Peter as soon as she met with her lawyer in a few days.

This was five months ago.

"He's manipulating you, goddamnit!" Chris was fairly certain that Peter had never in his life fucked a woman without some sort of ulterior motive, so it was all too convenient when Mariska walked in on him screwing some 25 year old girl at their apartment the day before her scheduled meeting with the divorce attorney. Mariska knew about the other men, both before and after their marriage, and dismissed it as 'just something he does'. Some husbands golf, some go fishing. Hers had sex with men. As she told Chris- as long as he used a condom, didn't bring them around the kids, and looked the other way from her own indiscretions- then she was perfectly fine with this arrangement. But as far as him sleeping with women... "He knows you don't give a shit who he fucks, but your goddamn fragile ego can't take the idea of seeing him in public with some little girl on his arm. Am I right?"

"You don't get it, Chris!"

"What? What part don't I get? The part where you'd rather stay in a miserable relationship than let him go find a new younger beard just because it might ruin the image of your perfect family? Because I hate to tell you, but everyone knows it's fake. The only thing that's real here is that he got tired of being controlled by you and now the tables have turned. As long as you stay with him, you're letting him win." Personally, Chris couldn't figure out why _either_ of them stayed other than that they're both stubborn and masochistic, but he didn't really give a shit what Peter did until it affected his own plans. Like it did now. "Or maybe it's not fake at all. Is that what I'm missing?"

"No. Stop."

"I bet he really gave it to her good, huh? And that's what got you all fucked up?" She's crying so loudly that he's afraid he'll attract a nurse's attention and get kicked out, but it's not enough of a threat to get him to stop. "All this time you believed it when he said women didn't do it for him, but maybe he was lying. Maybe it's just you."

"I said stop."

He doesn't buy a single word that's coming out of his own mouth at this point, but he's not interested in telling the truth. He just wants to get a reaction. "Maybe that wasn't the first time. Maybe it wasn't even the first girl."

"Why the hell did you come here?" she asks, arms wrapped around herself and shoulders shaking. "I don't need this, I don't need _you_..."

"Really? Do you wanna check my phone? Because if anyone saw it, they might think you were borderline obsessed-"

"What am I supposed to do? You get mad that we're not spending enough time together when I go out of my way to be with you every chance I can get-"

"That's exactly it!" he says. "That's exactly what I'm tired of, being the thing you fit into your schedule whenever you have free time. You're happy to get fucked and then rush off to wherever you're going next, but I'm done with that. I can't do it anymore, and that's what I was trying to tell you."

"And to tell me that, you have to threaten my family? My son?"

" _Ours_." She shakes her head almost violently. "Christ, you can't even say it."

"We don't know that for sure."

"Then let's find out! What the hell are we waiting for?"

"I'll be goddamned if I let you drag him into this...how could you? How could you say something like that and then just disappear? That was low, Chris, even for you."

He decides to ignore that last bit. Truth is, he knew he made a mistake. Not like the one they made together ten years ago- if you can call that a mistake. He doesn't and he never will. It was a situation that got out of hand one day on set, a stupid fight that sent her storming off to her trailer and sent him following right behind her to try and talk it out. She wasn't feeling well, mentally or physically, after weeks of pre-IVF hormone injections and he should've been more sensitive. So he apologized, admitting he'd been a dick. She agreed, but she let him hug her anyway, and then their lips met for the first time in months and there was no holding back anymore. They knew the risks of having sex at that point in time. They used a condom, they thought they were being careful- but by the time they realized that the damn thing had ripped, it was too late.

And so when she got that positive pregnancy test two weeks later, a question mark hung in the air. He promised her that no one needed to know. As far as he was concerned, that baby belonged to her and Peter. But deep down, he knew the truth, and he knew she did too.

They rarely talked about it. Even though he hated thinking that he was missing out on his son's childhood while he called some other guy Dad, he kept his promise to her and never stopped hoping for the day when she'd get her shit together and they'd be the family that they always should have been. So maybe that's part of the reason why he lost it when she started to backtrack on her divorce plans after she caught Peter cheating. But nevertheless, it was wrong of him to use their son as a pawn in their argument. "I'm sorry, Rish, I shouldn't have-"

"You're fucking right you shouldn't have! To even _suggest_ that you'd demand a paternity test, that you'd turn _my_ son's world upside down just to get back at me for-"

"It's not just to get back at you, goddamnit! Can you think of someone other than yourself for a second? No, I wouldn't do that to him, but I'm not going to apologize for wanting to be part of his life. I get this tiny piece of you, and I get this even tinier piece of him, I don't even get to see him grow up. So I said that because it was the only way to get your attention, to get you to realize-"

"That's such bullshit, Chris. If you cared so much, then why have I barely heard from you since then? How am I supposed to believe you're so concerned about missing us while you're out there fucking half the women on the entire eastern seaboard? How is it good for _your_ son to have his mother getting sick worrying about what you might do to us?" she asks, punctuating each question with a loud sob. She's still shaking, and he wonders how much of it comes from being upset and how much of it is because it's been at least several hours since her last drink. He's pretty sure she hasn't been sober all weekend.

"So what is it you want? What is it you think you're gonna accomplish by texting me pictures of you..." He can't even bring himself to say it, like it's okay to talk about children conceived out of wedlock but mentioning that she sends him naked photos might get them both kicked out of the hospital.

"You don't think I looked good?"

"Mother of fucking Christ! Is it that you just want attention, or are you trying to seduce me so I'll stay away from _your_ kid? Because I've gotta say, that just might be the most fucked up thing you've ever done."

"I just want you," she insists, teeth chattering. "I love you. And I know you still love me."

"That's not the issue. I told you, I'm done with this. With the games, the lies, I'm done settling for the occasional fuck. No matter how good it is," he adds, because he knows what she'll say next otherwise. "So are you ready to stop playing around?"

"Why are you dumping this on me all of a sudden? I'm _sick_ , I can't deal with you right now," she cries, as if she's not the one who wanted him here in the first place.

He shrugs and stuffs his hands in his pockets. There's so many other things he could be doing right now, he doesn't need this. _Her_. "Bye, Mariska."

"What? Wait, no, I didn't tell you to- don't leave! You can't!"

He hears her crying all the way down the corridor. He keeps going and doesn't turn back.


End file.
